Lock on the Fridge

I’m going to have to put a lock on that fridge; Hana is constantly raiding the fridge, knows how to climbs all the way to the top shelf, gets pieces of cheese, salmon and salami all by herself, looks for food in Tupperware containers and drawers. And it’s not that she is hungry, if you give her something to eat, she’ll just put it aside.

Yesterday there was a kite festival downtown, but no wind. Free kites were handed out, and all you saw were adults running like mad, crisscrossing Martyr’s Square with little plastic kites fluttering behind them.

Today I visited Anne. Anne’s got a place somewhere in East-Beirut. Now and then she tries to be a good mother, and organizes some friends to come over and play with daughter Parel. This is extremely stressful for her, because when you invite a child to play over, you automatically get the mothers too, and she doesn’t do too well with mothers. There were a few other moms, of which one was a severely constipated French lady who was constantly making sure her four year old didn’t do this and didn’t do that and didn’t touch this and didn’t touch that and didn’t eat this and didn’t eat that. “Did you was your hands before you touched the food?” Anne – being far from relaxed herself – tried to give her some advice as to how to relax. She got all worked up about the fact that this French woman got herself all worked up about her daughter. It was very amusing to see, and Joke, Tineke and I observed this with great amusement.

Tomorrow there is a 5 K Unity walk, I think I’ll go with Adrian and Hana. I must say that since the opposition is organizing all these anti-Syrian events, there is suddenly a lot more to do in this town. Free music concerts, kite festivals, candle tours, marathons, human flags, balloon releases and on and on.

Next week they have planned all sorts of sports events and children’s theater, in order to commemorate the beginning of the civil war, exactly 30 years ago. It all hints distinctly toward the opposition, but it’s fine with me, they are keeping the place quite alive at the moment. Anne has a gig downtown on Wednesday, so I think we are going to check it out. We’ve got to see the ‘Great Balloon Release’ anyway. The kites didn’t go up, let’s see if the balloons will.